Mccarthyism : Alive Yesterday, Today, And Tomorrow

Mass hysteria has been part of history since the beginning of time. It happened in the United States the years 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. In Salem, two young girls were responsible for starting mass hysteria by showing erratic behavior and accusing other people of witchcraft. This resulted in the death of over 20 people. Salem citizens were very confused and scared because they were never sure of how secure they actually were. Another reason Salem citizens were nervous was because, if their fate was put to the test, it would be in the hands of an unreliable court. Another event that involves mass hysteria was the one known as “The Red Scare”. The Red Scare was a variety of actions that led to an enduring episode of fear and hostility through the years 1940s and 1950s. The Red Scare was caused by a series of threats towards America. The Red Scare had many figures but two that were exemplary to others were Hoover and McCarthy. These men stirred up the environment with more problems than it had before. Citizens of America were surrounded by many threats especially their homes being corrupted by the pressure they were surrounded by. Politics played a very keystone part in The Red Scare because it was the fuel to the fire. Families and friends were being separated since

History is known for having ways to replay itself, for example, the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Trials. The Salem Witch Trials were a sequence of hearings and accusations that took place between 1692 and 1693. In these trials over 200 people were accused of having contact with the Devil and around 20 were victims of false accusations and death. The McCarthy trials, extremely similar, a series of hearing were Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the U.S. of allowing communist to have a seat in their government causing over 2,000 government members to lose their employment. Both the McCarthy Trials and Salem Witch Trials display history’s repetitions with the similarities of mass hysteria, the absence of proper evidence, and accused outcasts.

Mass hysteria can strike anywhere, anytime. Mass hysteria is an illusion or condition that affects a group of people, and is caused by anxiety, fear or stress. It can sometimes put people at risk because in most cases, it makes people sick. Mass hysteria has a negative impact on people like it did on the people of Salem who were killed and locked away. The Crucible was one of many examples of how fear can cause mass hysteria and unfortunately there are many more. Fear causes mass hysteria and has many cases that can prove that this is true.

Since the late 1940s, American cinema has been obsessed with the idea of the atomic bomb and what it stands for; whether that be destruction or absolute power depends on the film. This symbolism would then come to define the 1950s, and later on American cinema as well. This symbolism then must be addressed from the lenses of, both, history and socio-political commentary. Then the question must be posed why specifically these two lenses? The answer to this question, then, lies in the films of the 50s, and beyond. Whether this answer lies in the apocalyptic imagination present in the films or the politics of the time, McCarthyism would influence American culture far beyond the 50s, depends on the historian who is asked. The answer, then,

McCarthyism- McCarthy was a senator famous for the communist hysteria in the 50’s. He blamed 205 State Department workers for having ties with communists. He gained support by playing into American’s fears of the spread of communism. Though some of these people accused of not being loyal were in fact not loyal, most weren’t. His accusations were mainly built on speculation. His smear tactics became known as McCarthyism. Once he questioned the army’s loyalty that was it and he was called out by Eisenhower.

McCarthyism has a lot to do with America 's history, even still today examples of McCarthyism are seen in america . Most victims of mccarthyism are hollywood actors and famous people because they impact american society more than regular people. Famous people such as Helen Keller, Leonard Bernstein , Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Artie Shaw, Zero Mostel, Charlie Chaplin, Langston Hughes, Orson Welles, and Dolores del Rio were blamed for supposedly being part of the communist party. But that was not all, there was also another 205 average people that were blamed for being a part of the communist party as well. McCarthy’s committee then started investigating the United States Army. His charges kept affecting more and more powerful people.

The Red Scare, also known as, McCarthyism started in the early 1950’s. It got the name McCarthyism from Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy. McCarthy started The Red Scare. It was very similar to a witch hunt but, it wasn’t witches they were hunting for. They were searching for communist. The Red Scare was a horrible and cruel period during the early 1900’s.

Do you know what mass hysteria is? Mass hysteria is a condition that affects large group of people by behaviors, beliefs, anxiety, and symptoms of illness. Some examples of a mass hysteria are the Killing of John F. Kennedy, in the Middle Ages the case of Mewing and Biting Nuns, and the Indian Alien Attack. Most recognizable is The Holocaust with the murdering of Jews, and the Japanese- American Internment Camp during World War II. The famous Salem Witch Trials is an earlier example of mass hysteria and the killing of innocent people.

To talk about McCarthyism we must first look at what was going on in the United States at the time. WW II had just ended a few years prior, and the cold war was in full swing. Following WW II, for the US Government to be able to spend so much of the taxpayers money on the cold war, the Government had to get the US citizens behind them. To do this the US government started a propaganda campaign to scare the public into thinking the communists were bad and very dangerous people. That the communist people, their way of thinking, and their type of government had to be contained. There were several things that happened to help in-force what the government was saying. First Czechoslovakia and China fell to communism.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s America was overwhelmed with concerns about the growing threat of communism in Eastern Europe and in China. One senator in particular, Joseph McCarthy took this one step further and made more than two-hundred accusations against these supposed communists, one of these people being Arthur Miller. Miller dared to stand against McCarthy and used The Crucible as a way to show McCarthy’s flaws without approaching him directly. The Salem Witch Trials and the Scares in the Mid Nineteen hundreds both remind us that no man is perfect, and we do make mistakes.

Mass hysteria is a phenomenon that transmits collective allusions of threats through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear. The Crucible by Arthur Miller accurately portrays mass hysteria that took place during the Salem witch trials of 1692. People were accused based on revenge or other malicious motives and to make the situation worse, nothing about the trials was logical. After a few people were accused, fear set into the town and everyone was viewed as a witch until proven innocent. Mass hysteria not only happened during the Salem witch trials, but right after the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001 as well. Mass hysteria ties into both the accusations made in The Crucible and the islamophobia that set in after 9/11.

In the 1950’s fear was installed into american citizens, this fear was known as McCarthyism. Which is known as the practice of making accusations of treason without proper evidence. Sam Roberts was a New York Times journalist who published the article “a decade in fear” in 2010. This published article was written about the crisis that occurred in the 1950s when John McCarthy turned Americans against each other. By the end of World War II in 1945, the Soviet Union controlled most of Eastern Europe and installed Communist puppet regimes in countries like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and East Germany. The soviet union controlled most of the european continents after the civil war because they wanted to have a lot of power over people.

The Salem witch trials were caused by a group of girls who wanted to get moral vengeance on others for the unproven morals they have disregarded. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, has portrayed the ideology behind mass hysteria excellently, and common traits are located throughout all of the events of mass hysteria mentioned in this paper. Our society has not changed compared to the societies during the Salem witch trials. Individuals are still comparing themselves to one another. It takes a single popular party to completely change a person’s actions and opinions towards a topic. As to why mass hysteria should be interpreted as a popular trend, rather than an unpredictable

The success of McCarthyism can also be attributed to it resonating with American values of anti-radicalism and a wariness of the alien. Griffith argues that McCarthyism was grounded in a political culture rooted in American history which fears the unfamiliar and ‘un-American’. These roots can be traced back throughout American history, for example the anti-immigration efforts of the late 19th century such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. McCarthyism represented the fear that the United States would once again be ‘overwhelmed’ by aliens who would dilute the America way of life. Preston argues that the Internal Security Act of 1950 was in fact a continuation of the hostile treatment of radicals by the federal government, which traditionally

Does history repeat itself? Most people would think that the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s are a repeat of the Salem witch trials. Accusations were false as well as fictional, in fact the only reason people were accused at all were for the personal gain of the accuser. Both instances of these accusations (the McCarthy hearings and the witch trials) only accused people others to make themselves look better, or to gain respect. They both wanted to gain respect because it was not something they had much of, especially the girls of salem. In 1692, people accused of being witches were used as scapegoats for society’s issues; once more in 1950, people instead were accused of being communist, but were used as scapegoats for society’s issues. Looking back, both cases were pointless and caused nothing positive with the exception of people looking back on other’s mistakes. Many people were killed in the town of Salem in, and if they were not killed, they had their reputations ruined forever. Anyone charged by Joseph McCarthy had their reputations as well as their careers demolished. None of this would have ever happened if the people involved in these hearings and trials had broke out